Growing up in the Southern Baptist Church in Tennessee– the leadership of the church was ALL about the men.

Men preach.

Men pray.

Men are told to be the spiritual leaders of the home.

Never do you see a woman taking up the offering or being asked to lead the closing prayer or even teaching under the block of the service called “the sermon.”

But what happens when you grow up and feel called to do exactly the opposite?

What if people tell you as a teenager, “Well, if you were a young man, I’d tell you to be a preacher.”

What if you ARE a leader, a proclaimer, and someone who wants to discern life in conversation with your partner?

What then? I guess there are many different paths but for many it looks like this:

You must leave your “home church” and the approval of the sweet little old women who gave you peppermints from their purse every Sunday.

You must leave your “favorite” status at family gatherings when everybody talks about what they do.

Yet, you learn to sing as clearly as you ever had in your life: “I have decided to follow Jesus. No one goes with me I still will follow. No turning back. No turning back.”

While it sounds fun and revolutionary maybe– from the outside looking it– to actually do it can be one of the hardest things you ever do in your young adult life.

It was for me.

It takes more courage than you ever thought you had. And most of all, it takes sticking closer to the message of Jesus “to love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself” more than you thought was possible.

But you do it, no matter what. You do it because you know you have to. You chose to save your own soul because in the end, it’s all you can really save anyway!

Brene Brown writes this about such a process in her book The Gifts of Imperfection: “Choosing authenticity is not an easy choice. Staying real is one of the most courageous battles that we’ll ever fight.”

So, though I have never voiced, “I am gay” I have had to say: “I am no less than because I am a woman.”

In this small way, I know what rejection feels like. I know what Bible verses shoved in your face feels like. I know how costly choosing the real you can be.

And in return, I want to include. I want to advocate for voices that get shoved to the margins. I want to also look people in the eye when it comes to marriage and say, “Yes, you can. I will marry you.”

So here I stand waving my marriage equality flag for all that is and is to come! Both for the movement of women in leadership in the church and inclusion of all our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. We’re all God’s children after all.